Donald Trump has not been president for a hundred days – he will pass that marker at the end of April. Already the assessments are in: this is the most disruptive and transformative start ever to a presidential term.
The United States government is being turned inside out by Elon Musk.
The New York Times reports that Trump’s “expansive interpretation of presidential power” is an attempt “to consolidate power over courts, congress and more”.
In other words, to defang the legislature and the judiciary, the two other, supposedly independent, branches of government established to act as checks and balances to presidential autarchy.
On the international stage, the White House has, in practice, given the green light to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to up their assaults on Ukraine and Gaza, while cold shouldering NATO allies.
These are big and controversial changes for which Trump claims a mandate after winning both the electoral college and the popular vote in last year’s election.
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His dramatic moves might be expected to stimulate as much passion among politicians as they are in the general public.
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Yet – perhaps because Trump is judged to be so powerful at this stage – his elected opponents at home and abroad are struggling to organise effectively against him.
A two-party fight
American politics is strictly a two-party fight. There are no significant third forces.
Politicians are either Republican or Democrat.
Outside election years when both parties have presidential nominees, there is no equivalent to a British leader of the opposition, fighting the president blow by blow.
What opposition there is to an incumbent president is led from the US Congress.
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Currently the Democrats are in an exceptionally weak position because they are in the minority in both the US Senate and the House of Representatives.
They are routinely outvoted by the Republicans.
This month, to the disgust of many Democrats, their party leadership in the Senate passed up on a rare chance to oppose the Trump administration.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and eight other Democratic senators sided with the Republicans to allow Trump’s Budget Resolution to pass.
Democrats, including Schumer, denounced the resolution because it contained massive cuts to government programmes such as housing, social security and healthcare.
But Schumer justified his last-minute change of heart because the federal government would have shut down unless the bill passed.
“A shutdown would shut down all government agencies, and it would solely be up to Trump and DOGE (department of government efficiency) and Musk what to open again, because they could determine what was essential,” he explained.
“So their goal of decimating the whole federal government, of cutting agency after agency after agency, would occur under a shutdown.”
Democrats in both Houses were furious. Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crocket said Schumer is “absolutely wrong”.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut argued that the Democrats had aided Trump and Musk’s plan to destroy government so they can hand control over to their “billionaire friends”.
Jon Stewart, the star host of the Daily Show, said simply of Schumer “you are a disgrace”.
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TV comedians like Stewart and his former partners Stephen Colbert and John Oliver have become some of the most outspoken public critics of Trump.
They viciously mock the Democratic establishment, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, for repeatedly insisting that the MAGA “fever will break”.
Meanwhile, Schumer protests that it will not be possible to do sensible deals in Congress until Trump’s popularity rating drops to 40%.
It could be a long wait. At the moment the president stands at around 48% approval while the Democrats are at a pitiful 27%.
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This is not a basis from which they can confidently expect to harvest in 2026, the backlash against the president’s party which often occurs in mid-term elections.
There is little coherence as senior Democrats mount their own freelance campaigns.
Two prominent radicals from blue states, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are outspoken about the violations of the Constitution which they believe the administration is perpetrating.
Together they are embarking on a nationwide “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. They are joined in anger by the governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, who denounces “villainous cruelty by a handful of idiots”.
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Sanders, 83, ran for the Democrat nomination in the past.
Both Ocasio-Cortez and Pritzker have been talked about as possible future runners.
Other Democrats worry that their values are too leftish and woke to win back the extra votes their party needs.
This seems to be the view shared by other potential candidates for the 2028 nomination.
Some are keeping a low profile. Pete Buttigieg has declined to run for the Senate and Kamala Harris says she will not announce any plans until the autumn.
Two governors are emerging as early hopefuls: Gavin Newsom in California and Harris’ former running mate, Tim Walz, in Minnesota.
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Newsom spotted Trump’s dominance on social media and in the manosphere of podcasting.
Newsom has adopted an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” strategy and set up his own podcast series.
His guest list is raising eyebrows for including Trump’s outrider Steve Bannon and other prominent MAGA figures.
When he finally got his invitation, centrist dad Walz wanted to know why Newsom is promoting “bad guys”.
So the Democrats in the US are arguing with each other and still looking for a way to take on Trump beyond hoping that his popularity will drop before he has terminally destroyed the democratic system.
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Political leaders across the spectrum in Europe are privately aghast at what looks like the end of international politics as they have known it.
But they do not want to provoke Trump’s vindictive wrath by pointing out publicly that he is destroying America’s role as the lynchpin of the Western alliance.
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UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor in waiting, Friedrich Merz, have one key asset: Trump is overwhelmingly unpopular in their countries.
This allows them to adopt a two-faced strategy – smilingly trying to salvage whatever they can from their existing links, while preparing to defend their countries with America as an unreliable ally and seemingly as an economic foe.
No one has a plan to take on Trump directly.
The best they have come up with is to hope he goes too far and destroys himself.
In so many ways that is not a safe bet. Trump’s first hundred days may yet be the least extraordinary of his term.
